weren't getting any from the headmaster. You know, the man once sent us a bill, charging us for the use of school prop- erty; because we practiced in one of the music rooms on a Sunda)T." The yen for freedom in Radiohead's sound owes a lot to Gilmore-James, who immersed his students in tvventieth- century classical music, avant-garde music of the postwar era, classic jazz, and :film scores. Once, he had the school orchestra perform Richard Rodney Ben- nett's score for "Murder on the Orient Express" while the :film was playing. He left Abingdon in 1987 to devote himself to the legacy of his father-in-law, the Welsh composer Mansel Thomas, whose music he is editing for publication. "I watch over Radiohead much as I watch over my children," he said in a phone call. He spoke with the fastidiousness of a lifelong teacher, and yet his tone was enthusiastic rather than dogmatic. "They were all of them talented boys, in the sense that they had more than aver- age abilities to think for themselves. I was of a different generation, and I did not always grasp what they were after, but I knew that they were serious. And they were delightful to be around, al- ways getting carried away by their latest discoveries. Whenever I see them"-his voice became firm-"I tell them that they must continue to pursue their own original line. " In the schoolboy cadre of Radiohead, Yorke was the bossy one from the start. His very first words to Selway at re- hearsal were "Can't you play any fucking faster?" The band's early songs were all over the map, sounding variously like the Smiths, R. E. M., Sonic Youth, and the Talking Heads, whose song "Radio Head" gave the group its name. (At first, they performed under the name On a Friday, but they wisely changed their minds.) The strongest influence came from the Pixies, the incontestably great but never world-famous Boston band whose gritty, brainy songs, shaded soft and loud, also inspired Nirvana. Even as the boys wandered off to university; they got together over weekends, prac- ticing, arguing, and searching for a style. In 1991, Hufford, the co-owner of an Oxford sound studio, came to hear them play; at a place called the J ericho Tavern, and was mesmerized by Yorke's dire energy onstage. He and his partner 118 THE NEW YOR.KER, AUGUST 20 & 27, 2001 Bryce Edge produced a demo tape and signed on as managers. Colin, who was working at a record store, gave the tape to Keith Wozencroft, a sales rep for EMI, who moved to A. & R. shordyaf- terward and began to tout the band. They signed with EMI later that year. "I was getting ready to quit EMI when these lads appeared," Carol Bax- ter, Radiohead's international record- company representative, recalled. "Bunch of dismrbed consumptives, I thought. But they were ambitious and smart. At first, I had to hide my Radiohead paperwork behind the Tina Turner and Qyeensrÿche files, because my boss thought I was wasting my time. Then the call came in, from Israel, actually, saying that the band had a hit." Tim Greaves, Radiohead's longtime tour man- ager, commented on the band's overnight success. "The funny thing about Radio- head early on was that they were more famous abroad than in England," he said. "They'd go around in a van, playing in sweaty little clubs. Then they'd go to Israel and they were rock stars. Same in America. Then it was back to England, back to the van, back to the clubs. They had a good early introduction to the rel- ativity of fame. Fame for this band is a holiday that lasts a few weeks." R adiohead's ticket to fame was a song called "Creep." It became a world- wide hit in 1993, when grunge rock was at its height. The lyrics spelled out the self-lacerating rage of an unsuccessful crush: "You're so fucking special / I wish I was special / But I'm a creep." The music was modelled on Pixies songs like "Where Is My Mind?": stately arpeggios, then an electric squall. What set "Creep" apart from the grunge of the early nine- ties was the grandeur of its chords-in particular, its regal turn from G major to B major. No matter how many times you hear the song, the second chord still sails beautifully out of the blue. The lyrics may be saying, "I'm a creep," but the music is saying, "I am majestic." The sense of coiled power is increased by several hor- rible stabs of noise on Jonny Green- wood's guitar. Radiohead have stopped playing "Creep," more or less, but it still hits home when it comes on the radio. When Beavis of "Beavis and Butt-head" heard the noisy part, he said, "Rock!" But why; he wondered, didn't the song rock from beginning to end? "If they didn't have, like, a part of the song that sucked, then, it's like, the other part wouldn't be as cool," Butt-head explaJ.ned. "Creep," as Butt-head must have no- ticed, was the first of many Radiohead songs that used pivot tones, in which one note of a chord is held until a new chord is formed around it. (In the turn from G to B, the note B is the pivot point.) "Yeah, that's my only trick," Yorke said, when this was pointed out to him. "I've got one trick and that's it, and I'm really going to have to learn a new one. Pedals, banging away through every- thing." But a reliance on pedal tones and pivot tones isn't necessarily a limita- tion: the Romantic composers worked to death the idea that any chord could turn on a dime toward another. Yorke's "ped- als" help give Radiohead songs a bitter- sweet, doomy taste. (' bag," for exam- ple, being in A major, ought to be a bright thing, but the intrusion of F and C tones tilts the music toward the minor mode. "Morning Bell" sways darkly be- tween A minor and C-sharp minor.) It's a looser, roomier kind of harmony than the standard I-IV-V-I, and it gives the songs a distinct personality: It also helps sell records: whether playing guitar rock or sampling spaced-out electronica, Ra- diohead affix their signature. Through the years, many bands have thrown bits and pieces of jazz and clas- sical into their mix:. The Beatles were by far the best at this kind of genre assimi- 1ation. Lesser psychedelic and prog-rock bands turned orchestral crescendos and jazz freak-outs into another brand of kitsch. But Radiohead's classical com- plexity isn't pasted on the surface; it's planted at the core. If you did a break- down of the music, you'd find the same harmonic DNA everywhere. Another trademark is the band's use of musical space. Riffs are always switching reg- isters, bouncing from treble to bass, breaking through the ceiling or falling through the floor. In "Just," from "The Bends," the Greenwood brothers play octatonic scales that sprawl over four octaves; the effect is of music looming miles above you. There are times when Radiohead seem to be practicing a new kind of clas- sical music for the masses. In the ses- sions for "Kid .N.' and '%nnesiac," which began in 1999 and dragged on for a year